Marine Biologists Capture First Footage of Deep-Sea Squid Grimalditeuthis bonplandi

[n2doc]

Most squids have eight arms and two longer feeding tentacles. The tips of the tentacles, which are often broader and armed with suckers or hooks, are known as clubs. Such squids hunt by rapidly extending their tentacles and then grabbing prey with their clubs. The squids also use the tentacles to carry captured prey to their mouths.

The deep-sea squid Grimalditeuthis bonplandi seems to use a very different feeding strategy.

Using remotely operated vehicles, the MBARI scientists were able to study how these squids behave in their native habitat, about 1 mile below the ocean surface. Their findings appear in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

When the vehicles first approached, most of the squids were hanging motionless in the water with their eight arms spread wide and their two long, thin tentacles dangling below. What intrigued the researchers was that the Grimalditeuthis bonplandi‘s tentacles did not move on their own, but were propelled by fluttering and flapping motions of thin, fin-like membranes on the clubs. The clubs appeared to swim on their own, with the tentacles trailing behind.

Instead of using its muscles to extend its tentacles, like most squids, Grimalditeuthis bonplandi sends its clubs swimming away from its body, dragging the tentacles behind them. After the tentacles are extended, the clubs continue to wiggle independently of the tentacles.


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http://www.sci-news.com/biology/science-first-footage-deep-sea-squid-grimalditeuthis-bonplandi-01362.html

[Manifestor_of_Light]

1. My faculty adviser would be salivating.

He's probably not with us anymore.

Old Weird Harold I called him.

Had a Ph.D. in Malacology (snails and mollusks) and taught Invertebrate Zoology. I never took that b/c I did not want to cut up a slimy, ugly squid.

[Posteritatis]

2. That may be the best possible nickname for an invertebrate specialist. (nt)

[Manifestor_of_Light]

3. Yeah I got that from Bill Cosby.

The dude's name was Harold Murray, Ph.D.

Nice guy. Not surprisingly, had snail pictures and statues all over his office that people had given him.

Ya think that's weird? At another university, I took a course in SLIME MOLDS from a guy who had a Ph.D. in Slime Molds earned at The University of Texas. Apparently they had a slime mold authority at UT-Austin.

His wife taught the lab and she had a Ph.D. in FUNGUS.
She was the chief fungus person at NASA Mission Control in Houston.

Some biology nerds are just damn weird.

[Posteritatis]

4. Niche academic specialties can be fun

At the school where I did my MA, one of the historians specialized in crackpots. (His talks could cover some .. odd material.)